Cottage Grove police say woman smashed windows at weapons store

Chelsea Deffenbacher @ChelseaDeffenB

Thursday

Jun 14, 2018 at 5:09 PMJun 14, 2018 at 5:40 PM

COTTAGE GROVE — A woman who recently moved from Portland has been charged after allegedly smashing the windows of a controversial weapons store in Cottage Grove that is run by the family of a man convicted of a hate crime.

Laura Todd Rose, 31, was charged this week with one count of felony first-degree criminal mischief. She is accused of using an 8-foot flag pole to smash three windows at Wolfclan Armory around 5 p.m. Monday.

She then walked across the street from the business, sat down and waited for police officers to come, Cottage Grove police Capt. Doug Skaggs said.

"She didn't tell us a whole lot, but she did say she did it and was willing to accept the consequences," Skaggs said. "She had just moved here and had heard about this place, and didn't think law enforcement was doing enough, so she decided to take matters into her own hands."

Wolfclan Armory on East Main Street is a knives and weapons shop owned by Jeanette and Al Laskey. Their son, Jacob Laskey, is an inmate in the Lane County Jail, accused of stabbing a man in January at the Creswell Mobile Home Park.

Jacob Laskey, who has the words "white power" tattooed on his face, previously served time in federal prison for throwing Swastika-engraved rocks through a Eugene synagogue in 2002. He previously was sentenced to serve 11 years in prison.

The armory store recently moved to Cottage Grove from Creswell to try to reach more customers, Skaggs said. Since that time, there have been protests at the store and complaints to police by residents, but according to Skaggs, Jeanette and Al Laskey said they are not white supremacists or neo-Nazis.

"They say they're different people" than their son, Skaggs said.

In online videos posted last year, Jacob Laskey denied affiliation with any specific group and called himself an “anti-Antifa supremacist.” Antifa is a shortened version of the term anti-fascist.

Rose told police said she had been in Cottage Grove for three weeks, Skaggs said. The damage was estimated at more than $1,000.

Rose did not return a request for comment. She was released from jail Tuesday and is scheduled to return to court July 18 for a pre-trial conference.

A message sent to Wolfclan Armory was not immediately returned.

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